Man's Best Friend
by Dukes126plus
Summary: Yes, it’s a typical argument with Bo. It started with semantics and it’s going to end in a fistfight over a long-gone hooker. From A Boy's Best Friend, of course.


Luke's got it right in this one, from _A Boy's Best Friend_ (of course). There's no one to blame, except Bo and his silly little glee.

* * *

A little reminiscing about their younger days and obviously Bo's regressed to early puberty. Luke's describing the perfect solution to the problem of the broken-hearted orphan: "What needs a lot of love but gives nothing but pleasure in return?" Bo's hormone driven little brain can't handle the simplicity of it, so he comes out with a typically juvenile response.

"Cindy Mae Moffat, man's best friend." Grinning like he's twelve again, and maybe that's where he stopped maturing.

Cindy Mae Moffat. Yeah, he hasn't thought about her in close to ten years, probably, pre-Marines. He lost his virginity to her, and he's just realized, Bo probably did, too. Shoot, she was older than Luke, and the fact that she would do that with his baby cousin is just…

Typical, he supposes. It's Hazzard. Sex with Cindy Mae Moffat used to be just about as integral to growing up as getting a license and souping up a car. Just something boys did.

She's long gone, along with Mabel the Mobile Madam. A remnant of a wilder, maybe happier, past. Hazard's done some growing up of its own, and while it's still a mighty backwards place, some of its seedier elements have been run out of town.

It's a shame and it's not. Their lives would have been pretty dang interesting with more colorful friends and neighbors, but then again, he doesn't miss Cindy Mae Moffat at all. And he's surprised to realize that apparently Bo does.

So much for… well, anyway, he sets his cousin straight. They get the kid a dog, they lose the kid's dog, they track down dognappers and make a plea to dog owners. In the end, it gets worked out to being a good deed. Funny how he couldn't care less about that.

"Bo." He tries to remind himself that he's decided it's futile. "What made you think of Cindy Mae Moffat this afternoon?"

Oh, his cousin's willing to have this conversation, because it allows him to stop working. Takes that shovel he's been using to turn over the soil in Daisy's vegetable garden at the back side of the house, and uses it to prop up his chin. The setting sun makes his skin glow golden; Bo's been working on his tan harder than he's been working on the farm. Once again his shirt has gone missing. (Then again, so has Luke's, so he hasn't exactly got a strong case for shirtlessness being equal to laziness.)

"I don't know, you was saying something about easy…"

"I was saying something about love," Luke corrects him.

"No, you was talking about how Terry Lee needed something easy that would give him pleasure." Bo's adamant. He's also dead wrong.

"I said the boy needed someone to love. You love Cindy Mae Moffat?" he hears his tongue demanding, without ever having consulted his brain.

"No, I don't love her, Luke." So much for using the shovel as a chin rest, now it's hitting the dirt with an unceremonious thud. "I don't love her any more than you do." _Do you?_

Yes, it's a typical argument with Bo. It started with semantics and it's going to end in a fistfight over a long-gone hooker.

"All right," Luke snaps. "Don't neither of us love her. Let's just drop it."

"I don't want to drop it, Luke." Of course he doesn't. Bo just wants to drop the shovel, drop work and drop responsibility, trade it all in for a fistfight. "I want to know why you think I could love a girl like that."

"I don't know." Damn it, Bo's still three feet away from him, and yet he's already under Luke's skin. How does his cousin do that? Actual touches are almost an afterthought. Before he even gets close enough to lay a finger on Luke, he's already got him in a choke hold. "Maybe it's the silly grin you get when you mention her name."

And here comes the afterthought touch, Bo's chest against his, chin raised. "Who I grin about ain't none of your business," Bo informs him. "Unless you want to make it your business?"

Yeah, Luke wants to make it his business. Actually, it's always been his business; it's just time Bo realized that.

"Yeah," he answers, his hand going up against Bo's sweaty neck, pulling his cousin back towards him from the automatic flinch. "I do," he adds, giving a swift yank against Bo's remaining resistance.

They're going to have to come up with explanations for those fat lips they must have just given each other. First, though, they've got to work out where noses go, whose arms get the high ground and whose the low, and just how to get their hips aligned. That could take the better part of the night.


End file.
